there are two main benefits

1. using location services, the BP is available as you enter the airport, making the extra step of launching the united app unnecessary. the items in your passbook are made available when appropriate.
2. as an organizatinal tool: my BPs, hotel reservations, etc are collected in one place.

:

The more apps with location services on, the faster the battery drain, right?

Not really. Passbook is one app that tracks the location for all the passes, so it wouldn't matter if there are 1 pass or 20 passes.

As with any other app, you can turn off location services if you are concerned about it.

Also, the nice thing about having the bp in passbook is that you will get updates (gate changes, etc) on the home screen. The bp itself shows up on the home screen as a line item (like a reminder for a meeting), but I thought was annoying, so I turned that off. Apparently that was the only way to get rid of it, though when it's there, you can slide it to the right and go right to it. Yes, I still get notification center updates from the united.app, etc, also, so there is some duplication with update notifications.

When I went to use it, it was easier to get to with the passbook app.

Yes all relatively minor things, but anything that's easier to use is, IMO, a good thing.

-David

So do you hand your phone to the agent at the gate to scan?

And do same with loyalty cards at supermarkets?

It's nice to go paperless but one thing nice about having your own phone is that nobody else handles it so no germs from other people.

Do you want to hand the phone to a sniffling cashier?

I have never handed my phone to the gate agent, simply put my phone down on the reader, and off you go.

The same reader that they use to scan the paper boarding passes?

As long as they let you do that, great.

Ultimately though, I think NFC or Bluetooth is the way to go, so that you can keep the phone but it could transmit over 5 feet or so.

Now, if they can get things like Oyster cards to support it or credit cards so that you don't have to have EMV credit cards in Europe, that would make the thing take off.

Same reader.

I think it will be awhile before we see NFC used as a boarding ticket technology.

Used passbook on my current trip. A few thoughts:

I normally check-in online using a laptop or browser on a tablet so having to check-in using the UA mobile app and then sending the boarding pass to passbook felt like an extra step. Especially since I could just get it through the mobile app.

I didn't like that the flight shows on the locked iphone screen. It was there 6-8 hours before the flight and just made me feel like I was constantly going to be late for my flight. You can click the info button in the bottom right of the screen to turn this feature off.

Supposedly having it show on the locked screen will alert you to delays etc. When I landed at NRT I did get a pop-up saying the gate had been changed (really assigned) but that was a nice feature. But I also got an email from United saying the flight was departing late and the boarding pass in passbook still shows the original time. Would prefer to have it update with the new departure time.

I don't have anything else in passbook so the only thing showing are my two boarding passes for UA. If you had several things in passbook it might be annoying if you have to scroll through them all to get to the boarding passes.

I love iPhone 5 Bug .,
very useful to us.

Why does an iPhone cost only a couple hundred dollars? Because, as the stage performer Mike Daisey depicted in an arresting one-man show called 'The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,' Apple's shiniest products are made by a shadowy company in China called Foxconn.

I'm betting that in two years I'll be talking to you about a film that I shot on an iPhone. It's absolutely coming, I have no doubt in my mind.